Our Founders
Johanna Ngoh is a whisky aficionada who first journeyed across Scotland on her motorcycle in 2000 with her husband, Charles Anderson.
They returned home with an enviable clutch of whisky that formed the beginnings of a modest cellar.
Four years later they founded the Spirit of Toronto Whisky Gala at Roy Thomson Hall, and have continued their exploration of whisky on three continents, with visits to more than a hundred distilleries.
Their most prized bottle? A Bowmore 1972 from the ‘Flowers’ series of Italian bottler Samaroli, acquired from the estate of the late wine critic Luigi Veronelli, a personal friend of the legendary Silvan Samaroli.
Close behind is a Very Old Fitzgerald 8 Year Old, bottled in 1969 and gifted by a Wisconsin museum; and a Rittenhouse Rye 23 Year Old found in a dusty Vienna liquor store.
Johanna has written about whisky for a variety of publications, and she is the author of ‘Single Minded, A Modest Guide to Really Good Whisky’.
She is also the founder and publisher of Distilled, a print magazine that ran from 2016 to 2020, covering the craft and culture of fine spirits. Her writings on whisky and spirited travel can now be found on her popular Substack by the same name.
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